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38 tweets an hour

Byrichard

Yesterday I decided that I would track how many tweets I receive within a 24hr period. The result is not that bad. Over that period 917 tweets transited through my timeline. These tweets are sent according to the time of day. Some of them are sent during the Australian morning, European morning and goodnight time for America. As a result there should be some visible peaks at certain times of day.

It’s an average of 38 tweets an hour, not to bad when you consider that reading a hundred and fourty characters takes only a second or two to scan over. Out of those tweets the vast majority are in English although I get Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch and Swedish to name those I remember off the top of my head.

The topic of these tweets is quite diverse from people’s project progress to websites they enjoy as well as to their daily lives. It’s an interesting aperçu of what all these social (new) media people are doing. Many friendships are built up as a result of this social network. It’s still interesting and I look forward to getting a higher average than a measly 38 messages an hour. Add me on twitter and I’ll follow you too.

Podcrastinating

Byrichard

Podcrastinating, when you put off doing something because you prefer listening to a podcast instead.

It’s when you know that you should be doing a number of things but because you want to listen to conversations you listen to podcasts instead. Those guilty for taking a lot of my time would be From our own Foreign correspondent, quite a few of the TWIT podcasts and many more. It’s not that you’re not learning because you are. The problem is when you spend ten-twelve hours listening to podcasts rather than getting on with the tasks at hand.

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Posting about friends

Byrichard

When people write about friends should they post their twitter profile page or the websites their friends are working on. I’m asking this question because whilst reading a post today I was interested in the ability to follow these friends and see what they’re up to rather than read the website.

Reading a twitterstream is quick. 140 Characters are read almost instantly and adding someone that sounds interesting is instantaneous. As a result  I’m far more likely to follow and read a person’s blog if there’s a consistant reminder both of what they’re doing and who they are as a person.

It’s about time. I’m a scanner. I scan through content rather than trudge through it. If you’re linking to twenty people and you link to twenty blogs then there’s no way I’m going to have the time to read all this content. I’d saturate extraordinarily quickly.  Following another person on twitter takes seconds to do and I’ll track these people. Point me to a blog and there’s a chance I won’t take the time to look.

Has anyone had a similar reaction to twitter vs. blogs? Do you write about a group of friends, all of whom have twitter accounts? If so have you linked to their blogs or to their twitter profiles?

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On the Importance of understanding what you are writing about

Byrichard

Nick O’Neill needs to do more research. Most of what he writes is speculative based on two or three months of research rather than sociological research. He goes after trends and gut feelings. As a result whilst his content is interesting to keep a track of it’s not relevant to the type of content I am looking for.

Podcasters and social media people need to take a more academic approach to their writing. I’ve found myself angry with what Leo laporte and other podcasters have said. Some of them are really pro certain technologies and boasting about their advantages without taking a media tech and society view.

What I mean by this is that technology and communication are cyclical. What was really common in older media is going to become common in new media as more people come to use it. Radio and letter writing are what podcasting and e-mail are to their contemporary period.

It’s the same with the iphones being bricked. There was such an outcry within the early adopter crowd that you’d think technology has never evolved. We all know that more apps would be created for the Ipod touch and iphone for example.

It’s interesting to see how things are evolving and how by looking at previous technological trends we can see how the future will take place. Those who write about technology need to have a media studies background for a proper, well based understanding of their topic of conversation.

If you want historical information you want to find professors and their PhD thesis, the same should be true about technological writing.

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The Social Media

Byrichard

Forget the term new media, it’s passed, it’s gone. Today’s key word is social media. What this term means is the following. Any medium that encourages conversations via new technologies, whether twitter, blogs and podcasts or forums is a social media.

It is the idea that authority has disappeared. Rather than be talked to by the content producers a dialogue is formed. Liana Lehua of Girls gone geek.tv for example started following me just as I was listening to her talk on another podcast than your own.

There is no need for the tabloid press to tell us what the “rockstars” are doing, rather they tell us themselves. Look at Leo Laporte’s blog. Look at Documentally’s two websites. Look at Loudmouthman, Jeff Pulver and others. These people all create content for us to enjoy.

Each of these people is taking advantage of the social media to create a profile for their activities both as podcasts and textual content. Those who are new to the media, who have yet to create a name for themselves have a great opportunity. If you’re a sociable individual then take some time to learn about the social media movement and participate.

Participation is a key concept. We are all publishers, we all have a website. We have moo cards and they’re social media bookmarks. They’re just a quick way of sharing contact information. As soon as we get to our computers we add those we meet and keep up to date with what we’re doing. It creates a great sense of unity.

They’re also taking advantage of the new social media landscape. It’s a shame that most people are limited to zombie biting, vampires and other wastes of time rather than sharing their creative output. I wish more people would write about what’s important to them and share it via twitter, blogs and of course aggregate the content according to the various social media tools like Plaxo Pulse, Lijit and Tumblr.

This is a call for more people to take proper advantage of the current social media trends and participate more actively. Don’t just join a social network and post photographs. Write and produce content as well.

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why RSS feeds should be complete

Byrichard

When you’re creating web content that’s fed please think about those that are reading your feed from a device that is disconnected. here I am on a train and I’m captive to the content that you make available on your feed. Some feeds have the full article but others don’t.

The result of this has a simple consequence. There is no use for your feed on my mobile device since there is no content. I would thus urge anyone with a feed to make sure to make all content available so that people may access it on the move, especially since Wifi is not yet ubiquitous.

Facebook and marketing

Byrichard

Today I really wish i could vote for whether I like or hate the adverts that facebook are displaying in my news feed. The reason for this is simple. Whilst everyone else is complaining about how advertisers are destroying their privacy with targeted advertising I find the opposite is true. I’m really angry with Facebook advertising The Sun in my newsfeed, especially since there is no evidence of me enjoying tabloid crap anywhere on the worldwide web.

I’m angry for two reasons. The first one is that they dare to put such a crappy newspaper in my feed. The second one is how they advertise it. If they advertised quality news articles then I could forgive them but to advertise how they intend to invade the privacy of the stars is plain wrong and stupid. For this reason I was thinking of using just the portable version of facebook but to no avail. You can’t accept event invites so within two hours of deciding to ignore the full version I was back. I want to be able to accept events via mobile devices.

I also want to be able to say that I hate certain adverts. If I can say I hate news from certain friends then why can’t I say I hate the adverts. I want to let them know that their adverts are crap and that I dislike their products.

Facebook If you’re reading this let me show which adverts i hate. It’d be worth your while.

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The social media living room.

Byrichard

The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer.

Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband.

Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple

More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops.

Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more.
The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage.

Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do.

What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me.

These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope.

Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline.

This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this?

I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities.